How ACORN, Obama, and Bill Clinton started the sub prime crisis

ACORN that is continually in trouble for voter fraud also pushed the sub prime mortgage crisis that has destabilized our economy.  Disturbingly, Barack Obama promised ACORN that it was going to shape our national agenda.

ACORN was started in the 1970’s by Radicals George Wiley & Wade Rathke, with input from sociologists, Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, started ACORN in the 1970's.  All of them are neo-Marxist ideologists.

Barack Obama's Start In ACORN

ACORN is made up of several legally distinct parts including local non-profits, a national lobbying organization, and the ACORN Housing Corporation.  ACORN is partisan and always aligned with the Democratic Party on policy.

Obama began to work for ACORN via Project Vote in 1992 and as a trainer for the "power" seminars.  ACORNs "People’s Platform Preamble" includes "We are an uncommon people. We are the majority, forged from all minorities.  We are the masses of many, not the forces of few.  We will continue our fight until the American way is just one way, until we have shared the wealth, until we have won our freedom...This is not a simple vision, but a detailed plan...Our plan is to build an American reality from the American rhetoric, to deliver a piece of the present and the fruits of the future to every man, to every woman, to every family...We demand our birthright: the chance to be rich, the right to be free… "

Their goal is expressed when they state, “We will continue our fight until the American way is just one way, until we have shared the wealth, until we have won our freedom.”  They have committed their organization and resources to pursue their agenda.  Only when things are their way and wealth is redistributed to their liking, they will have won their freedom.  Not only do they have right to be rich, but also they deserve it by simply being born.

Although Obama denies ties to ACORN, he has been recorded as making this exact quote.  "I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career.  Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work." -- Barack Obama, Speech to ACORN, November 2007.

Obama publicly endorsed ACORN and then paid them more than $800,000 for its voter registration efforts.  ACORN used a lot of this money for voter registration fraud.  Obama's campaign disguised these payments in its' FEC disclosure as payments to a front group called Citizen Services Inc. for "advance work."  After initially telling the Federal Election Commission this money was for "staging, sound, lighting," Obama's campaign later admitted the cash was to get out the vote.

Obama was ACORN's attorney in the "Motor Voter" case instrumental in organizing "Project VOTE" in 1992.  The sole purpose of these activities was to destroy the integrity of the voting system.

Obama’s involvement with ACORN has been concealed in part by the wiping the web clean of potentially damaging articles that had appeared, and were previously publicly accessible.

The article, The Barack Obama Campaign, written by Toni Foulkes in 2004, a Chicago ACORN Leader, was published in the journal Social Policy.  Foulkes wrote, "Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won.  Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992.  Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office.  Thus it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends."

Obama’s campaign website in 2008 would deny this association stating:  "Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity."

Acting as ACORN’s lawyer, Obama sued Illinois in 1993, to make voter registration laxer.  The intent of relaxing voter registration rules was to allow illegal votes to occur.  This appears to be the Democratic purpose in its objection to the Voter ID amendments.  Why wouldn't you want voter ID laws unless you were going to benefit from it?  The Democrats favor illegal votes that would put themselves into office rather than protect the rights of true Americans.

Obama sued Citibank (Buycks-Roberson) as ACORNs attorney in 1994 to force them into giving sub prime loans to homebuyers with poor credit ratings, setting the stage for the mortgage meltdown.  As one commentator noted in May 2008, legal "successes" such as this were probably responsible for the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007 AND 2008.  That is, banks were not loaning to blacks whose credit was poor.  When the law forced them to lend money anyway, the inevitable collapse occurred.  [Yes, the very reasons for the mortgage meltdown was what Obama and ACORN fought for and then when it melted down, blamed President Bush and Wall Street.]  After obtaining a settlement in the Citibank litigation, ACORN used its subsidiary organization ACORN Housing, a nationwide organization with offices in more than 30 U.S. cities, to push the group's radical agenda to get sub prime home buyers mortgages under the most favorable terms possible.

ACORN’s tactical plan derives from the Rules for Radicals by Marxist Saul Alinsky.  These rules claim the ends justify the means, be it by ridicule, lies, cheating, etc.  The rules include holding the virtuous to exaggerated and impossible standards, while not playing by their rules.  One of the chief objectives is to sell "change."  The result of that change is an enforced "egalitarian" (Marxist) society.  Obama has taught these "rules."  Who can argue that Obama has not employed these means extensively since 2008 by lying, selling change, and holding the virtuous to exaggerated, impossible standards?

ACORN founders’ strategy has been the Cloward-Piven Strategy -- to overcommit government, growing it past the point of sustainability by causing crises. This, while developing an organized proletariat of dependent classes and applying them to disrupt society and revolt against American freedoms. All, to ring in the new "egalitarian" (neo-Marxist) state. That would be a big "change."  [This is exactly what has happened during Obama’s first term as President.  We have heard endless rhetoric pushing class warfare, social programs, and endless entitlements.]

Cloward, Piven, and ACORN’s leaders pushed to greatly expand America’s welfare roles.  Rudy Giuliani cited Cloward-Piven for an "economic sabotage" that led to the 1975 bankruptcy of New York City.  Obama is just another ACORN protégé who truly wishes to expand welfare rolls as opposed to increasing work rolls.

ACORN was a driving force for the revised Community Reinvestment Act of 1995, pushing sub prime mortgages through a eager Fannie Mae.  This allowed ACORN to pressure mortgagors to grant bad loans to bad risk homebuyers in the name of helping the poor.  Many of the poor were hurt further, while Fannie Mae prospered.  Their personnel gave Obama‘s campaign $126,349.

ACORN, claiming a membership of 400,000, is funded in part by wealthy, anti-American radicals such as George Soros and our tax dollars.  George Soros and Barrack Obama have ties and share similar interests, namely in destroying our free markets.

Barack Obama spent a lot of time disassociating himself from political partners such as his relationship with William Ayers.  Ayers is the unrepentant domestic terrorist of the Weather Underground and a man who still wants the overthrow of the capitalist economic system in the U.S.

Obama played a key role in the domino affect that led to the housing crisis we now endure.  Obama had a part in the lawsuit that started the government on a course of forcing lenders to give more loans to those who had poor credit.  Lending companies were forced to come up with imaginative ways of fulfilling the quota that was required.  Sub-prime lending was born as a result.  Many who were able to look beyond the quota forecast the mortgage crisis.

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation eased the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders, ... under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration.  The roots of the financial crisis go back to 1993, when Fannie and Freddie began stocking up on sub prime and other risky loans while reporting them as prime.

"  Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990s by reducing down payment requirements," said Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer.  "Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called sub prime market."

Fannie Mae took on significantly more risk when it entered the sub prime market.  This risk can be sustained during good economic times but inevitably come to a horrendous conclusion in a downturn.  The economic downturn came, as it always does in an up and down free market, and the government-subsidized corporation ran into trouble.  This led to a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry of the 1980s.

The meltdown in sub prime home mortgages has been widely regarded as a major contributing cause of the current recession that officially began in December 2008 after two consecutive quarters of negative growth in gross domestic product, or GDP.

During 2008, the Obama presidential campaign attempted to distance the candidate from ACORN voter fraud by arguing that the U.S. Department of Justice was on the same side of the Citibank case as was lawyer Obama, reflecting the Clinton Administration's determination to expand homeownership among the poor.

Obama administration's $787 economic stimulus package allowed ACORN access to approximately $2 billion for non-profit "neighborhood stabilization" non-governmental organizations.  Some of those funds could be allocated to ACORN to buy abandoned or foreclosed homes in impoverished neighborhoods, with the intent to rehabilitate them for resale or rental.

After the sub prime crisis had already started in 2007, Obama said that sub prime mortgages that gave houses to people who couldn't afford them was a good idea.  It was a good idea under Obama that he would then blame on George Bush Jr. for four years and running.  He can openly think it is a great idea until it collapses, then like his other ideas becomes someone else's.

The Treasury Department, under the advice the administration, removed the $400 billion cap to keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac solvent.  These two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) are responsible for one of the worst policy disasters in history.  The GSEs had begun buying risky loans in 1993 (under Clinton) to meet the "affordable housing" requirements established under congressional direction by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Most of the damage was done from 2005 through 2007, when Fannie and Freddie were binging on risky mortgages.  Democrat Barney Frank denied that there was any cause for concern, and claimed that he wanted to "roll the dice" on subsidized housing support.

By the end of 2008, Fannie and Freddie held or guaranteed approximately 10 million sub prime and Alt-A mortgages and mortgage-backed securities (MBS).  These risky loans had a total principal balance of $1.6 trillion.  These are now defaulting at unprecedented rates, accounting for both their 2008 insolvency and their growing losses today.  Since 2008, under government control, the two agencies have continued to buy dicey mortgages in order to stabilize housing prices.

Research by Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer for Fannie Mae and a housing expert, found that from the time Fannie and Freddie began buying risky loans as early as 1993, they routinely misrepresented the mortgages they were acquiring, reporting them as prime when they had characteristics that made them clearly sub prime or Alt-A.

There were 26 million-sub prime and Alt-A loans outstanding in 2008:  10 million by Fannie and Freddie, 5.2 million by other government agencies, and 1.4 million were on the books of the four largest U.S. banks.  In addition, about 7.7 million sub prime and Alt-A housing loans were in mortgage pools supporting MBS issued by Wall Street banks.  These later pools had long before been driven out of the prime market by Fannie and Freddie's government-backed, low-cost funding.  The vast majority of these MBS were rated AAA, because the rating agencies' models assumed that the losses that are incurred by sub prime and Alt-A loans would be within the historical range for the number of high-risk loans known to be outstanding.

Fannie and Freddie's problems mounted in large part to HUD's affordable housing regulations that required that in 2007 that 55% of all the loans the agencies acquired had to be made to borrowers at or below the median income, with almost half of these required to be low-income borrowers.

An article by Professor David Walls directly connects Rathke’s ACORN to Alinsky, ACORN’s mission of pressuring banks to issue risky mortgages, and the alliance between ACORN and unions:   ACORN announced: "On Feb. 19, ACORN members will launch a new tactic in fighting foreclosures: civil disobedience.  Participants in the ACORN Home Savers campaign nationwide will simply refuse to move out of foreclosed homes, or in some cases, will move back in.  ACORN homesteaders intend to squat in their homes until a comprehensive, federal solution for people facing foreclosure is put in place."

ACORN offices trained teams of "Home Savers" described as "people ready and willing to mobilize on short notice to defend the homesteaders against attempts to evict them."

Obama clearly follows these beliefs and almost daily encourages civil disobedience (Occupy Wall Street), class warfare (the 1%), social warfare (redistribution), partisan politics (never works with Republicans), the blame game (it's everyone else's fault, especially Bush's), and race warfare.

The Clinton Administration found that ACORN was misspending government grants designed to help counsel the poor.  Yet, Bill Clinton is now out stumping for Obama on the campaign trail.  Do you feel like most of us that Bill is more than a little reluctant representing someone he clearly does not believe in?  When Bill wins the Oscar later this year, we will finally recognize him for the actor he has been forced to become on Hillary's behalf.

A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19, 2008, The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a "a game changer."

Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the committee what she had been told by a former ACORN worker who had worked in the group’s Washington, D.C. office.  The former worker, Anita Moncrief, told Ms. Heidelbaugh last October, during the state committee’s litigation against ACORN, she had been a "confidential informant for several months to The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom."

Ms. Moncrief had been providing Ms. Strom with information about ACORN’s election activities. Ms. Strom had written several stories based on information Ms. Moncrief had given her.

During her testimony, Ms. Heidelbaugh said Ms. Moncrief had told her The New York Times articles stopped when she revealed that the Obama presidential campaign had sent its maxed-out donor list to ACORN’s Washington, D.C. office.

Ms. Moncrief told Ms. Heidelbaugh the campaign had asked her and her boss to "reach out to the maxed-out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN."

Ms. Heidelbaugh then told the congressional panel:  "Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at The New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, "it was a game changer."

Matthew Vadum, a senior editor and analyst with CRC has determined that the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) is best described as a "multi-headed hydra" with over 400,000 member families positioned in 110 cities fiercely opposed to the capitalist system.

"ACORN claims to be non-partisan but there are mountains of evidence that show it is flagrantly partisan," Vadum said. "It celebrates the most left-wing politicians and endorses Democratic Party candidates. Whenever ACORN is called out for activity that might violate their tax status, the standard operating procedure is to deny responsibility and to place the blame on rogue actors.  Their network is deliberately set up to avoid scrutiny and to create confusion."

While the organization’s complicated structure makes is difficult to determine how many affiliates and subsidiaries are tied in with ACORN’s vast apparatus, its connection with organized labor, especially the Service Employees International Union, is well-established, Vadum observed.

In 2008 SEIU spent over $42 million on independent expenditures and communications, more than any other group aside from the Republican and Democratic National Committees, according to OpenSecrets.org.  SEIU’s political action committee (PAC) also contributed about $2.3 million to candidates in the 2007-2008 cycle, with 94 percent of its donations going to Democrats.

According to a Washington Examiner article, ACORN has taken in $53.6 million in federal funding since 1994.  The taxpayers has been taken for $53.6 million that ended up in voting fraud scandals and a sub prime mortgage crisis, that ultimately cost this country its worst economy since the Great Depression.  This crisis was backed and supported by ACORN and its equivalent organizations, and was almost exclusively a democratic backed ideology.  All money into ACORNS programs, found its way back in terms of campaign support and money for Democrats.

Everyone may wonder what happened to the investigation and prosecution of ACORN for their crimes...well, nothing.  House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. backed off plans to investigate purported wrongdoing by the liberal activist group ACORN, saying "powers that be" put the kibosh on the idea.

The Washington News Observer published a video of Iowa Rep. Steve King delivering the opening statement at a Congressional forum on ACORN on December 1, 2009.  He said he is convinced that any investigation of ACORN will reflect poorly on the Obama administration, and "...these low roads, following ACORN, do lead to the White House."

King said "We know Obama has worked for ACORN" and he has been part and parcel of that -- Project VOTE in particular. That entire network is something the Chicago organization that now sits in the White House knows a lot about.

King also pointed out that the new White House Counsel -- Robert Bauer -- sent a 7 page letter to the Attorney General last year urging an investigation of President Bush and the McCain Campaign for "alleging that ACORN was promoting fraudulent voter registration activities."

Though the largely Democratic House Appropriations Committee voted against the block of funding for ACORN after voting fraud allegations, Bill Clintons appointee, U.S. District Court Judge Nina Gershon, provided the corrupt ACORN a free pass out of trouble.  Gershon issued a federal injunction against the Congressional funding ban, crying that it ran afoul of the Constitution because under the ban, ACORN was "singled out by Congress for punishment that directly and immediately affects their ability to continue to obtain federal funding, in the absence of any judicial, or even administrative, process adjudicating guilt."  Essentially, Gershon's ruling said ACORN can't be punished now because the Obama administration failed to punish it earlier via a long-overdue, much-needed criminal investigation into the group.

The relationships should trouble you -  ACORN, Obama, Clinton, Democrats -- in regards to the sub prime mortgage crisis.  Yes, the 80's were a good time in America, but did it come at a cost to those of us in the 2000's?  The answer is a resounding YES!  President Obama played a key role in formulating the plan to create the economic crisis and now disavows his role.  His role is undeniable and just another testament to the true character of the man he is.  If you vote for him, you deserve what you get, but for the sake of those who desire accountability and honesty, he isn't the one.

Cut our losses, forget the lies and rhetoric, and get rid of this presidential disaster now!

Note:  We missed what really made the 90's seem great.  Budget surpluses in the late 1990s were fed largely by deep defense cuts that gutted the military, while non-defense discretionary spending continued growing.  Source:  OMB; Historical Tablles, Table 8.7, February 2012.